This is without a doubt the worst biography I've ever read. It calls itself "the story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip," but it's not really. It's goes on and on interminably with anecdotes only tangentially related to the band:

"Gord Downie died from cancer, here's sixteen pages about other, completely unrelated, musicians who also died from cancer."

"Here's an entire chapter about the internal politics of the record labels, and how they affected other bands' records, but not how it affected the Hip's."

"That one time I went to a Tragically Hip show."

"Is the Tragically Hip really a /Canadian/ band? Or just a band from Canada?"

And lots of other banal shit like that. Skip The Never-Ending Present, it's clearly a cash-grab on the sensationalism after Downie's death. ( )

Hip hip hip...a must-read... ( )

There has never been an authorized biography of The Tragically Hip, and this book is no exception. While author Michael Barclay did approach the band and asked if they wanted the opportunity to fact-check the book before publication, they declined. They’ve never been interested in setting their story in print, preferring to let their music and their acts speak for themselves. But there’s certainly demand for a book to chronicle their story, particularly with Gord Downie’s diagnosis of brain cancer and his death in late 2017. This book covers the band’s entire career, with interludes to explore prominent themes in their work, Gord’s solo career, and of course the project Gord considered his most important: Secret Path, which brought the story of Chanie Wenjack to light.

While this book is “unauthorized”, it has been put together with great care and consideration for its subjects. Barclay, who contributed to the mammoth Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995, knows his scene and has amassed a great deal of interviews and other material to bring the band’s story to life. He quotes from fellow musicians and from superfans, and from what little the band has said in interviews and on stage.

I particularly liked his “debunking the American myth” where the hoser contingent of the Hip’s fanbase complains about the Hip not making it big in America and why doesn’t America get the Hip and oh I guess they’re our best-kept secret and we can be smug and superior about America not getting it. Barclay points out that the Hip have done very well in American markets where they got a lot of radio play: border towns in particular, with other pockets throughout the US (Texas is a hotbed of Hip fans). And of course with the Internet, the Hip will find their people around the world, so complaining about a lack of American success is hopelessly backward anyway.

This is an educational book and an emotional one: toward the end I had to keep putting it down because remembering the last concert was choking me up and I didn’t want to cry big fat tears on a library book. Another side effect of this book is the irresistible urge to binge on some Hip songs: rediscovering old favourites or giving the perennially skipped songs a second chance.

The nitpicking: I could have done with more photos. Always more photos! And the section about Gord’s poetry quotes from a poet I like (Damian Rogers), but says that she’s co-written songs with Jim Cuddy, when she actually co-wrote with Greg Keelor. If she did co-write with Jim, it’s news to me!

I would recommend this book to Hip fans and to people who were in Canada in the summer of 2016 and were not quite sure what this Hip thing was about. I rate this 4 stars for the content and an extra half-star for all the Hip bingeing I’m now doing as a result of reading this book. ( )